Submit your comments:

Decades ago, dishwashers took about an hour to produce a clean, dry load of dishes. Today, they need nearly 2½ hours, and often the dishes come out neither clean nor dry.

Why? Because over the years the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has imposed increasingly strict “efficiency” regulations on these appliances. These rules are supposed to give us dishwashers that clean just as well as the ones our parents and grandparents used, and that supposedly save us money as well. But huge numbers of consumers are finding that these claims are false. They often have to pre-rinse their dishes in order for the dishwasher to get them clean. Or they have to run their loads twice. Or both.

Worst of all, for many people, is the fact that today’s dishwashers are so incredibly slow.

As one person wrote to DOE, “Please mother of God, allow someone to make a dishwasher that will get my dishes for a family of 5 clean enough, fast enough to empty the dishwasher by bedtime! Currently, to get a load clean, we have to run it on the hour long cycle, then the four hour cycle to get them clean. This saves neither time, water or electricity.”

Last year CEI petitioned DOE to do exactly that—to change its rules to permit one-hour dishwashers. This would give consumers a choice that they currently don’t have. Over 2,000 consumers sent individualized comments to DOE in response to our petition, and over 97 percent supported us!

DOE is now seeking more public comment on this issue. It’s asking whether one hour is the right standard for this proposed dishwasher category. (We think it is, because it’s simple and because it was once the average cycle time for dishwashers.) DOE also wants information about the quick wash cycles that many of today’s machines offer. (In our view, these aren’t a substitute for a one-hour standard, because they usually work well only for light washes.)

We urge you to submit your views on these and related points to DOE. Above all, you should stress the need to bring one-hour dishwashers back, in order to clean up the regulatory mess that dishwasher regulation has created.